PC Gamer recommends RSS readers in a 37mb article that just keeps downloading

adampunk wrote: post #4

nslsm wrote: post #2

[flagged]

Post a network recording of that page loading from a code start on your machine. I’ll believe chrome devtools.

(Note that if OP considers to do this, they probably want to do this in a private tab, as to not leak potential sensitive cross-site cookies)

Re: PC Gamer recommends RSS readers in a 37mb article that just keeps downloading

#7

Post by goldenarm » Sun, Mar 22, 2026, 7:56 PM UTC

I'm trying to migrate to 100% RSS right now, to avoid the hateful algorithmic editorialization of modern social media.

And I'm shocked that almost no paid media provides full articles in RSS anymore, and force me to navigate their 37MB pages with popups all over the place. Has anyone found a solution against that ?

Edit : Sorry I'm asking specifically about paywalled stuff

Re: PC Gamer recommends RSS readers in a 37mb article that just keeps downloading

#8

Post by righthand » Sun, Mar 22, 2026, 7:58 PM UTC

goldenarm wrote: post #7

I'm trying to migrate to 100% RSS right now, to avoid the hateful algorithmic editorialization of modern social media. And I'm shocked that almost no paid media provides full articles in RSS anymore, and force me to navigate their 37MB pages with popups all over the place. Has anyone found a solution against that ? Edit : Sorry I'm asking specifically about paywalled stuff

Reader mode + ad blocker

Re: PC Gamer recommends RSS readers in a 37mb article that just keeps downloading

#9

Post by 3842056935870 » Sun, Mar 22, 2026, 7:59 PM UTC

nslsm wrote: post #2

[flagged]

5 min in, after only scrolling to the bottom of the article:

4300 requests, 238 MB downloaded

With Firefox and all extensions disabled

Re: PC Gamer recommends RSS readers in a 37mb article that just keeps downloading

#10

Post by FractalParadigm » Sun, Mar 22, 2026, 7:59 PM UTC

nslsm wrote: post #2

[flagged]

The author's complaint(s) stem from the ads that "just keeps downloading" which in approximately five minutes downloaded "almost half a gigabyte" worth of information.

This is a prime example of why many people use adblockers, it's not just to make the majority of the web actually usable, but it prevents excessive data transfers that we never asked for. For what it's worth, the same article is just a hair over 8MB when ads are blocked and a hair over 9MB when you scroll down (loading the thumbnails for the other articles).